Half of companies planning to replace customer service with AI are reversing course
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Can we get our customer service off of "X former know as Twitter" too while we're at it?
Sure, once it is no longer one of the most popular social media platforms.
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Sure, once it is no longer one of the most popular social media platforms.
Why does your customer service need to be on a popular platform? There's no network effect.
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Hilariously, many of these companies already fired staff because their execs and upper management drank the Flavor-Aid. Now they need to spend even more rehiring in local markets where word has got round.
I’m so sad for them. Look, I’m crying
It has the same energy as upper management firing their IT staff because "our systems are running fine, why do we need to keep paying them?"
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They're trying to use AI to take over the overseas jobs that took over our jobs.
I feel no sympathy for either the company, the AI, or the overseas people.
It does make me smirk a little though.
Why not the overseas people?
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Phone menu trees have their place, they can improve customer service - if they are implemented well, meaning: sparingly - just where they work well.
Same for AI, a simple: "would you like to try our AI common answers service while you wait for your customer service rep to become available, you won't lose your place in line?" can dramatically improve efficiency and effectiveness.
Of course, there's no substitute for having people who actually respond. I'm dealing with a business right now that seems to check their e-mails and answer their phones about once per month - that's approaching criminal negligence, or at least grounds for a CC charge-back.
AI + worker effort is the sweet spot for efficiency and accuracy
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Are porn sites replacing staff with AI though? Not content since that comes from contributors for the most part, but actual porn site staff.
No idea honestly.
AI-based romantic companions, sexting, and phone-sex are going to be huge if they aren't already. It's like "Her", because we live in a Black Mirror episode.
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Oh my God... The best/worst thing about the idea of AI porn is how AI tends to forget anything that isn't still on the screen. So now I'm imagining the camera zooming in on someone's jibblies, then zooming out and now it's someone else's jibblies, and the background is completely different.
It's a solvable problem with larger context buffers, but the resource requirements grow exponentially.
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Most of the time when I talk to a chat bot it's because I need to contact support for an issue only support can help me with, but unfortunately the company in question is Id.me and they apparently don't have support of any kind and all these tickets I've been writing have been going into a paper shredder
all these tickets I’ve been writing have been going into a paper shredder
Try submitting tickets online. Physical mail is slower and more expensive.
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AI + worker effort is the sweet spot for efficiency and accuracy
Yeah but these pesky workers cut into profits because you have to pay them.
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It has the same energy as upper management firing their IT staff because "our systems are running fine, why do we need to keep paying them?"
The IT paradox :
-"Why am I paying for IT? everything runs fine"
-"Why am I paying for IT? nothing works"
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Phone menu trees have their place, they can improve customer service - if they are implemented well, meaning: sparingly - just where they work well.
Same for AI, a simple: "would you like to try our AI common answers service while you wait for your customer service rep to become available, you won't lose your place in line?" can dramatically improve efficiency and effectiveness.
Of course, there's no substitute for having people who actually respond. I'm dealing with a business right now that seems to check their e-mails and answer their phones about once per month - that's approaching criminal negligence, or at least grounds for a CC charge-back.
Phone menu trees
I assume you mean IVR? It's okay to be not familiar with the term. I wasn't either until I worked in the industry. And people that are in charge of them are usually the dumbest people ever.
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The good thing: half of them have come to their senses.
The bad thing: half of them haven't.
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I called the local HVAC company and they had an AI rep. The thing literally couldn't even schedule an appointment and I couldn't get it to transfer me to a human. I called someone else. They never even called me back so they probably don't even know they lost my business.
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Someone already tried.
A television commercial for the loyalty program displayed the commercial's protagonist flying to school in a McDonnell Douglas AV-8B Harrier II vertical take off jet aircraft, valued at $37.4 million at the time, which could be redeemed for 7,000,000 Pepsi Points. The plaintiff, John Leonard, discovered these could be directly purchased from Pepsi at 10¢ per point. Leonard delivered a check for $700,008.50 to PepsiCo, attempting to purchase the jet.
And one funny addendum to that story is that someone COULD reasonably think that Pepsi had an actual Harrier to give away. After all, Pepsi once owned an actual navy.
In 1989, amidst declining vodka sales, PepsiCo bartered for 2 new Soviet oil tankers, 17 decommissioned submarines (for $150,000 each), a frigate, a cruiser and a destroyer, which they could in turn sell for non-Soviet currency. The oil tankers were leased out through a Norwegian company, while the other ships were immediately sold for scrap.
The Harrier commercial aired in 1996. The Harrier jet was introduced in 1978. It wasn’t too unreasonable to think that an 18 year old jet aircraft would be decommissioned and sold, especially after Soviet tensions eased. And if ‘they’ let Pepsi own actual submarines and a destroyer, doesn’t that seem more far fetched than owning a single old jet aircraft?
Guy should’ve gotten his Harrier.
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Why does your customer service need to be on a popular platform? There's no network effect.
I've never used Twitter and do not plan to. That doesn't mean that everyone else has to stop using it because I don't approve of it.
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I've never used Twitter and do not plan to. That doesn't mean that everyone else has to stop using it because I don't approve of it.
Well yeah, the reason you don't approve of it matters. If you never approved of it because you never liked the UX, then that's not a good reason for everyone to stop using it.
When we minimize other reasons to "words you don't like", we imply an unimportant personal preference, and not a social choice with consequences for others.
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AI + worker effort is the sweet spot for efficiency and accuracy
...and it's only expensive and ruins the environment even faster than our wildest nightmares
what you say is true but it's not a viable business model, which is why AI has been overhyped so much
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The transition to an AI-focused business world is proving to be far more challenging than initially anticipated.
No shit, Sherlock.
This isn't a surprise to anyone except fucking idiots who can't tell the difference between actual technology and bullshit peddlers.
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Well yeah, when ai started to give people info so wrong it cost the companies money this was going to happen.
Fun fact: AI doesn't know what is or isn't true. They only know what is most likely to seem true. You can't make it stop lying. You just can't, because it fundamentally doesn't understand the difference between a lie and truth.
Now picture the people saying "We can replace our trainable, knowledgeable people with this". lol ok.
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Hilariously, many of these companies already fired staff because their execs and upper management drank the Flavor-Aid. Now they need to spend even more rehiring in local markets where word has got round.
I’m so sad for them. Look, I’m crying
I have been part of a mass tech leadership exodus at a company where the CEO wants everything to be AI. They have lost 5 out of 8 of their director/VP/Exec leaders in the last 3 months, not to mention all the actual talent abandoning ship.
The CEO really believes that all of his pesky employees who he hates will be full replaced by cheap AI agents this year. He's going to be lucky to continue to keep processing orders in a few months the way it's going. He should be panicked, but I think instead he's doing a lot of coke.
